THE ROOMS

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Tchoupitoulas Room

The Tchoupitoulas Room is located along the street of the same name with views of the historic area through the original wood sash windows. This room accommodates up to 50 guests for seated meals and up to 65 guests for receptions.

Higgins Room

The Higgins Room is Calcasieu's largest room boasting an open floor plan with access to the main bar. This space is ideal for formal seated meals as well as cocktail reception for up to 100 guests.

Tchoupitoulas + Higgins Room

The Higgins Room and Tchoupitoulas Room combined offer an extensive dining area to accommodates up to 150 guests for a seated meal and up to 200 guests for receptions. This space also allows for combining cocktail receptions with sit-down dinner, or business presentations followed by formal meals.

Wine Room

The Wine Room offers the most private dining experience, accented with hand-crafted, cherry wood furnishing by a local artist and carpenter. The space accommodates up to 20 people for a seated meal or up to 25 for a small cocktail reception.

Mezzanine

The Mezzanine at Cochon restaurant accommodates semi-private gatherings. The lofted space offers room for up to 30 guests for a seated dinner and accommodates up to 40 guests for a reception.

ABOUT US

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DONALD LINK

Inspired by the Cajun and Southern cooking of his grandparents, Louisiana native Chef Donald Link began his professional cooking career at 15 years old. Recognized as one of New Orleans’ preeminent chefs, Chef Link has peppered the streets of the Warehouse District of New Orleans with several restaurants over the course of the past fifteen years. Herbsaint, a contemporary take on the French-American “bistro” was Link’s first restaurant. Cochon, opened with chef-partner Stephen Stryjewski, is where Link offers true Cajun and Southern cooking featuring the foods and cooking techniques he grew up preparing and eating. Cochon Butcher is a tribute to Old World butcher and charcuterie shops which also serves a bar menu, sandwiches, wine and creative cocktails. Calcasieu is Chef Link’s private event facility that takes its name from one of the parishes in the Acadiana region of southwest Louisiana. Pêche Seafood Grill serves simply prepared coastal seafood with a unique, modern approach to old world cooking methods featuring rustic dishes prepared on an open hearth over hardwood coals. In the summer of 2015, Chef Link celebrated the opening of a second location of Cochon Butcher in Nashville. Enjoy handcrafted pastries and breads at La Boulangerie Link’s neighborhood bakery and café.

Link’s flagship restaurant Herbsaint earned him a James Beard award in 2007 for Best Chef South. The same year Cochon was nominated for Best New Restaurant; Link was also nominated by the James Beard Foundation for the prestigious award of Outstanding Chef for multiple years. Pêche Seafood Grill was awarded Best New Restaurant at the 2014 James Beard Foundation Awards. Gourmet Magazine listed Herbsaint as one of the top 50 restaurants in America, and was inducted into the Nations Restaurant News Hall of Fame. Cochon was listed in The New York Times as "one of the top 3 restaurants that count” and recently named one of the 20 most important restaurants in America by Bon Appétit. For his commitment to the industry, the Louisiana Restaurant Association honored Link by naming him Restaurateur of the Year in 2012.

The James Beard Foundation also honored Link’s first cookbook-- Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana (Clarkson Potter) with their top award for Best American Cookbook. Released in 2009. Real Cajun is a collection of family recipes that Link has honed and perfected while honoring the authenticity of the Cajun people. In February 2014, Link celebrated the release of his second cookbook "Down South: Bourbon, Pork, Gulf Shrimp & Second Helpings of Everything," (Clarkson-Potter), which looks beyond New Orleans and Louisiana at dishes in nearby states. In 2015, Chefs Link and Stryjewski created the Link Stryjewski Foundation to address the persistent cycle of violence and poverty, as well as the lack of quality education and job training opportunities available to young people in New Orleans. http://www.linkstryjewski.org

STEPHEN STRYJEWSKI

Winner of the 2011 James Beard Foundation “Best Chef South,” Stephen Stryjewski is Chef/Partner of New Orleans’ award winning restaurants Cochon, Cochon Butcher, Pêche Seafood Grill, Calcasieu a private event facility and La Boulangerie a neighborhood bakery and café. Stephen has been honored as “Best New Chef” by New Orleans Magazine, and as a “Chef to Watch” by The Times-Picayune. In 2007 Cochon was named a “Best New Restaurant” finalist by the James Beard Foundation, and in 2014, Pêche Seafood Grill won the James Beard Foundation award in the same category. Cochon has been recognized in the New York Times by Frank Bruni, “Coast to Coast, Restaurants that Count;” and Sam Sifton, “Dishes that Earned their Stars,” and has been consistently listed as a Top Ten New Orleans Restaurant in The Times-Picayune Dining Guide and was recently named one of the 20 most important restaurants in America by Bon Appétit.

In 2015, Stryjewski and his business partner Chef Donald Link created the Link Stryjewski Foundation to address the persistent cycle of violence and poverty, as well as the lack of quality education and job training opportunities available to young people in New Orleans. http://www.linkstryjewski.org

In 1997, Stryjewski graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and went on to work for some of the most notable chefs and restaurants in America including Michael Chiarello at TraVigne, Jamie Shannon at Commanders Palace, and Jeff Buben at Vidalia. Stryjewski grew up moving frequently as an “Army brat” and has traveled extensively in the United States and Europe. He resides in New Orleans’ Irish Channel with his wife and two daughters.

RYAN PREWITT

Chef and Partner

Ryan Prewitt began his culinary career in the farmer’s markets of San Francisco, where a burgeoning interest in food developed into a full-blown career. After spending time working for chefs Robert Cubberly and Alicia Jenish at Le Petite Robert Bistro, he moved to New Orleans to work with Chef Donald Link at Herbsaint. Ryan proved to be a quick study under Link’s tutelage and became Chef de Cuisine in 2009. He subsequently moved on to oversee culinary operations at Link Restaurant Group as Executive Chef for the company.

With a new job came an increased ability to learn and travel. As a member of the Fatback Collective, a group of Southern chefs who have compiled numerous accolades and awards in restaurants across the South, Ryan has learned new traditions and techniques from many talented BBQ pitmasters and has traveled to Uruguay to study traditional open-fire cooking. These experiences, along with a trip to observe grilling techniques in Spain, culminated in the opening of Pêche Seafood Grill. Ryan received the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: South in May 2014, the same year Pêche earned the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant.

NICOLE MILLS

Chef de Cuisine

Nicole was born and raised in the Philippines. She grew up in a small town called Cagayan de Oro, in Northern Mindanao. Her family owned a bakery where she grew up watching the production of fresh baked bread in an old fashioned wood burning stone oven. Farm to table has always been part of the Filipino culture. Nicole’s family was known for growing and producing some of the sweetest corn in the area along with farm raised pigs, chickens, and lamb. Her mother specialized in making and selling siomai and siopao at the family’s Dim Sum stall. Food has always been part of the family business.

After graduating from Ateneo de Manila University, Nicole moved to New York in 2001 to attend the French Culinary Institute in Soho. Her culinary career began with Danny Meyer and Union Square Hospitality Group cooking at both Eleven Madison Park and Gabriele Kreuther’s the Modern at MOMA. She worked as a tournant for Chef Alain Allegretti at Atelier in the Ritz Carlton Central Park and later with Chef Dan Kluger at the Core Club. After New York, Nicole moved to Los Angeles to work at the Thompson Beverly Hills with Chef Brian Redzikowski.

Nicole moved back to her hometown in the Philippines after L.A. to open a Creole concept restaurant. After a few years back home she relocated to New Orleans. She joined the Link Restaurant Group to be part of the opening team at Peche Seafood Grill in 2013. Nicole became the Chef de Cuisine at Peche in 2019.

MAGGIE SCALES

Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Maggie Scales pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of California, San Diego majoring in Language Studies. She then moved to Boston to attend the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in the Professional Pastry Program under Pastry Chef Delphin Gomes. While in school, Maggie worked at Chef Bob Kinkaid’s Sibling Rivalry Restaurant and the Metropolitan Club under Chef Todd Weiner. Upon completing culinary school, Maggie worked as a Pastry Chef at Smith & Wollensky Steakhouse in Boston. In 2009, she had the opportunity to work with James Beard winner Lydia Shire at Scampo Restaurant at the Liberty Hotel. When Chef Shire opened Towne Stove + Spirits, Maggie became the Executive Pastry Chef of the 300-seat establishment. In June 2011, Maggie relocated to New Orleans and began working for the Omni Hotels. She then joined Link Restaurant Group as a Pastry Chef, and in the summer 2014 Maggie accepted the position of Executive Pastry Chef overseeing all aspects of Link Restaurant Group’s pastry department.

PUCK HOPKINS

Remarkable bounty

Our passion to showcase the remarkable bounty of the Southern region is revealed through our commitment to developing long lasting relationships with the network of farmers we work with. Our Forager, Ashley Locklear, cultivates those relationships by working hand-in-hand with these growers to develop and procure the exact ingredients each chef wants to utilize when crafting their menus at our family of restaurants. Our recipes honor the simplicity of the food and we celebrate the ingredients that are incorporated into each dish.

Meet our Forager

ASHLEY Locklear

Ashley spends her days visiting farmers, walking their fields seeing firsthand how things are growing. She’s scouring Louisiana’s farmlands for sublime raw ingredients and invests time working directly with farmers to grow specific varieties of produce that Chef Donald Link and his team of chefs would like to utilize in their kitchens. Her network of farmers spans a 250-mile radius of New Orleans, providing the freshest produce picked at its peak. She believes food it about flavor, just as much as freshness.

The Farms

Please find here a listing of some of the farmers we are proud to work with on an ongoing basis.

Allen Bee Farms

Allen Bee Farms is small honey producer located in Plaquemine, Louisiana.

Cafe Hope Farm

Cafe Hope Farm is located in Marrero, Louisiana, that specializes in herbs and has year round fruit and vegetable production.

Compostella Farm

Compostella is a certified organic vegetable farm specializing in salad greens located in Tickfaw, Louisiana. After apprenticing on organic farms in the Northwest, owners Madeline and Tim made their way down to New Orleans. Certified Organic since 2017, Compostella strives to minimize the inputs to their farm and to nurture the farm’s expressions as an individuality.

Covey Rise Farms

Covey Rise Farms began as a 10 acre farm which has grown into a 50 acre farm in central Tangipahoa Parish. Covey Rise Farms grows over 30 types of vegetables throughout the year with a retired LSU Agriculture Professor as their crop consultant.

Good Food

Beginning as a demonstration garden, The Good Food Project has expanded to over 75 active school and community gardens that grow vegetables, fruit and herbs. The project teaches sustainable gardening, nutrition and healthy eating options, while providing fresh produce to participants and restaurants.

Indian Springs Farmers Co-op

Incorporated in 1981, Indian Springs is a farmers cooperative with 31 active members located in Petal, Mississippi.

Inglewood Farm

Inglewood Farm, ran by members of the Keller family, is an agricultural operation on Inglewood Plantation located in Alexandria, Louisiana. Since its founding in 1836, Inglewood has a story of transition from a large-scale commercial tenant operation to an all-encompassing sustainable family farm. Inglewood has year round production of fruit and vegetables, specializing in pecans, pork and chicken.

Isabelle’s Organic Citrus

Isabelle’s Orange Orchard is a small, family-owned farm nestled on the old winding River Road in New Orleans. Isabelle’s orchard is fertilized by the rich Mississippi River alluvial soil and the only thing on her trees are sunshine, ladybugs, honeybees, and rain.

J&D Produce

J&D Produce is a small farm that grows blueberries and is located in Poplarville, Mississippi.

Johndale Farm

Johndale Farm is a berry farm located in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, owned by Heather Robertson, who we have worked with for eight years. Heather primarily produce strawberries, as well as blueberries and blackberries, and is usually the first farm to bring berries to market.

Major Acre Farm

Major Acre Farm is a small farm located in LaPlace, Louisiana run by Ellis Douglas. He left his life as a chef and headed for the farm after moving to New Mexico and being exposed to the variety of healthy produce that is available in a farm-centric community. Ellis uses sustainable and organic agriculture practices to cultivate his one-acre farm.

Old Market Lane Farm

Old Market Lane Farm is an eight-acre farm located in Hammond, Louisiana, that we have been working with for eight years. Our restaurants utilize their leeks, blueberries, summer squash and any extra eggs Carolyn may have.

Peeps Farms

Peeps Farms is a poultry farm located in Carriere, Mississippi that specializes in yard eggs with love.

Perilloux Farm

Perilloux Farm is a six-acre farm in St. Charles Parish owned by the friendly farmer, Timmy Perilloux, who we have been purchasing from for the last 10 years. The restaurants utilize Perilloux’s traditional Southern greens, up to four varieties of kale, tomatoes, peppers, corn, beets, and anything else Timmy is willing to grow for us.

Poche Family Farm

Poche Family Farm is a small vegetable farm located in Independence, Louisiana that we have worked with for five years. The farm is a family venture run by Albert and Charise Poche along with their children Billie and Camille, that resulted out of a desire to eat well. While their produce is not certified organic, they focus on sustainable agriculture by using cover crops, organic pesticides and natural fertilizers wherever possible.

Two Dog Farm

Two Dog Farm is a small family farm located in Flora, Mississippi. Owned and operated by Van and Dorothy Killen, Two Dog Farms specializes in seasonal field grown produce using sustainable and natural growing methods to ensure the healthiest produce available.

Veggi Farmers Co-op

Veggi Farmers Cooperative is a group of local farmers and fisherfolk dedicated to providing the highest quality local produce and seafood to the Greater New Orleans area. VEGGI was established following the effects of the BP oil spill on the Vietnamese community and was developed to provide sustainable economic opportunities in urban agriculture.

James Beard Foundation Awards

LINK RESTAURANT GROUP JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION AWARD RECOGNITION

The James Beard Foundation Awards recognize outstanding achievement within the food and wine industry. Considered one of the most coveted marks of distinction within the culinary community, Link Restaurant Group partners are honored to have been recognized for their culinary achievements. Link’s flagship restaurant Herbsaint earned him a James Beard award in 2007 for Best Chef South. The same year Cochon was nominated for Best New Restaurant; The James Beard Foundation also honored Link’s first cookbook– Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana (Clarkson Potter) with their top award for Best American Cookbook. Link was also nominated by the James Beard Foundation for the prestigious award of Outstanding Chef in 2012, 2013 and 2014. Stephen Stryjewski, chef/partner of Cochon, Cochon Butcher and Pêche Seafood Grill was named Best Chef: South at the 2011 James Beard Foundation Awards. In 2014 Pêche Seafood Grill was honored with two coveted James Beard Foundation Awards Best New Restaurant and Chef Ryan Prewitt Best Chef: South. In 2017, Chef de Cuisine Rebeca Wilcomb was named Best Chef: South for her stewardship of the Kitchen at Herbsaint.

Recipes that add to an evolving native language. A storyline that carries diners from Acadiana’s bayous to the live-fire cooking pits of Uruguay. Seafood so unspoiled you’ll leave itching to bait a hook. These are the building blocks at the foundation of Pêche. All (save for the Uruguay thing) are familiar. So how is it that Pêche, a seafood specialist in a town where even steakhouses can claim the same, persists in having no peer? You could ask a similar question about every restaurant operated, as Pêche is, by the Link Restaurant Group. The company has a flair for turning deceptively simple ideas (New Orleans bistro-trattoria at Herbsaint, modern Cajun-Southern at Cochon) into conceptual scoops.

Peche is the realization of a visionary vision: a true Louisiana seafood restaurant that owes little to any particular style of restaurant that has come before. Its recipes follow such convincing logic the dishes taste as if the kichen has unearthed forgotten history.

Fish are beasts. Flounder resemble shrunken sea monsters, with their crooked lips and creepy migrating eyes. You can tell they hang in the murky shadows just by the color of their skin. It’s dark enough to show through miso chili butter. Redfish, speckled trout and red snapper are sleeker species but all still unmistakably animals, with tails, skeletons and spiky fins. That’s a representative sample from my scrapbook of Pêche Seafood Grill, where meals are lessons in piscine anatomy. Look up from your plate at any moment and you’ll find a room of diners taking to the food like Alaskan brown bears to spawning salmon. They’re tearing through whole gulf fish, grilled or roasted in the heat of a live hardwood fire. The fish, the flames, the bones everyone are pulling clean from their mouths: These are the visual signatures and culinary touchstones of this remarkable restaurant. Still, whole fish aren’t even the half of it. Pêche is the realization of a modest but still visionary vision: a traditional Louisiana seafood restaurant that owes little to any particular style of restaurant that has come before. Its chef and co-owner, Ryan Prewitt, is not prone to wild experiments. Whatever thought process goes into Peche’s food is concealed beneath a veneer of simplicity…

Pêche means “fishing” in French, but change the spelling to péché and it’s “sin.” In the case of the restaurant on Magazine Street opened earlier this year by chefs Ryan Prewitt, Stephen Stryjewski and Donald Link, the former is what’s intended, but you have to admit that both meanings are apt for a restaurant in New Orleans. Pêche was conceived as a seafood restaurant, but after the chefs spent time in Uruguay and Spain, they knew that a wood-burning grill had to be a feature as well. Factor in a raw bar and a serious drinks program and you get one of the most interesting restaurants to open in New Orleans in quite some time. It isn’t as though the place is immune to trends – there are small plates and bar food on the menu – but there aren’t a lot of other places doing whole fish on a wood-burning grill (redfish with salsa verde and American snapper with Meyer lemon on my last visit) and certainly none where the fish changes with such frequency that they print an insert daily. That insert also lists the oysters they have available and what they’re doing in the way of raw fish. There are always a few other items available on the raw side – a seafood salad, crab claws with chile and mint and a seafood platter, for example and highlights from the “snacks” menu include a smoked tuna dip served with saltines, hush puppies and fried bread with sea salt that’s completely addictive…. A few months ago I ran into chef Link while I was eating at Pêche. Link (and this is true of Stryjewski and Prewitt for that matter) is the kind of guy who lights up when he’s talking about food. What I remember most about that conversation was the way he described the Royal Red shrimp. He is fond of them, and justifiably so; they’re large, sweet-salty things that are cooked in a little butter but otherwise basically un-seasoned. They are the perfect example of what ingredient-driven cooking should be – not an excuse for a lack of technique, but the recognition that some things are best enjoyed simply.

Times Picayune Dining Guide

Best New Restaurants
Brett Anderson

This airy warehouse space is where Donald Link, who rose to prominence as chef-owner of Herbsaint, and Stephen Stryjewski, Link’s co-chef and partner at Cochon, are empowering their Peche co-owner Ryan Prewitt, Herbsaint’s former chef de cuisine, to run a restaurant of his own. Cut to the chase: At this stage of the game, the youngest member of the modern family that is Link Restaurant Group is as good as its sibling restaurants (both among the best in town). The concept is south Louisiana seafood dishes, much of it cooked over hardwood coals. The twist is that the food tastes thrillingly new without disconnecting from tradition. After a meal at Peche Seafood Grill, it’s possible to imagine a fantasy fish camp where ground shrimp is tossed with housemade pasta or embedded in buttery, cocktail-time toasts; where blue crab enriches eggplant gratin or chile-spiked capellini; where whole grilled redfish is draped in salsa verde and drum is baked with ginger and tomato. That place is, in fact, not a fantasy; just be sure to book a table in advance, because everyone in town appears intent on living it at once.

Food & Wine

Editor’s Letter by Dana Cowin

“Where have you been eating lately?” I get this question all the time. And luckily, it’s one of my favorites to answer, since I have the opportunity to try the most amazing restaurants around the country. So here’s a little update of where I’ve been recently. Pêche I stopped counting after 10: That’s how many whole fish I saw waiters carrying out to customers at Donald Link’s new restaurant. The whole-animal trend has now been embraced by pescatarians. Two friends and I shared a moist, flavorful grilled redfish with salsa verde. It could have served six!

Bon Appétit

Top 50 New Restaurants – Pêche Seafood Grill, New Orleans

Donald Link and Stephen Stryjewski—along with chef-partner Ryan Prewitt—opened this homage to fish just down the street from their famed pork emporium, Cochon. The centerpiece here is a roaring wood-fired grill onto which most everything on the menu is tossed. Come here with a crew on nights when you want to eat a grouper as big as a fire hydrant.

Travel + Leisure

On Our Radar – Restaurant Hit List

Gulf Seafood has no truer companion than Donald Link, whose Warehouse District newcomer Pêche Seafood Grill showcases local catfish and shrimp – all cooked over a live fire.

Southern Living

Southern Living

In New Orleans, Donald Link, Ryan Prewitt, and Stephen Stryjewski recently revealed Pêche Seafood Grill, an open-fire emporium inspired by a trip to Uruguay. Don’t miss the smothered cast-iron catfish, a riff on a Cajun classic.

As we dug snowy-white meat from between the bones of a hog snapper at Peche, it wasn’t just the name of the fat, whole fish before us that brought to mind a Cajun boucherie. Rather, it was the bigger picture guiding this fascinating new restaurant from chef Donald Link. Like the pig made into charcuterie, chops and hams at a traditional boucherie, fish come to Peche whole and go out to tables as seafood salads and crudo dressed with oils and herbs, in fillets and steaks and, most dramatic, intact from tip to tail.

Great seafood has never been hard to find around here, but an argument could be made for a certain lack of inspiration in the way many places prepare it. However, a new wave of seafood establishments have come onto the scene offering a different take on what can be done with the daily catch. They approach the same ingredients with a fresh perspective – and the results are rewarding. Pêche, the seafood-centric offering from the Link Restaurant Group, is one of the year’s more anticipated openings. In terms of design it shares more DNA with Cochon than Herbsaint, offering a dining room defined by floor-to-ceiling windows and exposed wooden beams, creating a feel that’s simultaneously contemporary and rustic. And like Cochon, the menu puts the focus on small plates, snacks and sides. But it’s the beast of a wood-burning grill, a custom-built iron and brick rig in the back that serves as the real engine of Pêche and is its most defining feature…

Times Picayune

A week before opening day, the Link Restaurant Group’s new restaurant Pêche Seafood Grill was still a hardhat zone. Crews carried boards back and forth. An Internet installer showed up looking for the foreman. The tables, stacked under tarps, had yet to be assembled. The green walls needed another treatment. And most importantly, the custom-built grill, which will turn out a big chunk of the menu, had yet to be lit and tested. Donald Link was not worried. “We’ll be laying bricks,” he said, “with people coming in the front.” “All the seafood places in the state are the same,” Donald Link said. “We wanted to do it differently.”That’s how it was when he opened Cochon back in 2006 with Stephen Stryjewski, and Cochon turned out fine. Link this time also has the help of Ryan Prewitt, a partner and chef at Pêche. The three of them have been planning this indoor exploration of open-fire cooking for two years: hitting the barbecue circuit, cooking in backyards, traveling to Uruguay to grill meat, and even to Spain’s Basque country to watch seafood cook over embers. “Somehow,” Link said, “we got on this track of cooking over wood. And then we got inspired by those trips and tried to make it work in a seafood model.” The Warehouse District building that houses Pêche started as a carriage house. Then it was a mortuary: Jefferson Davis was embalmed here. Next, the building stored coffee beans. Link and his team tried to preserve as much of the building as possible, and not just for the historic tax credits. The towering wooden doors are original. Look carefully and you’ll see their intricately carved brass hinges. The rough beams have been there from the beginning. And even the new furniture, built by chef Susan Spicer’s husband Chip Martinson, uses old material. For example, the dining room chairs with their charred surfaces and gently curving lines once were Old New Orleans Rum barrels. Inside the main door sits a massive wood bar lit by a crystal chandelier. The bar is a larger version of something the team saw in Uruguay, but it also is an homage to the classic wooden bars at local institutions such as the Absinthe House and Napoleon House. The drinks menu will be heavy on rum and light liquors. The wine list will be eclectic and designed to pair with fish. They might even get a daiquiri machine for a frozen rum punch. Link stopped the tour and asked for a pen. He looked at the back of the bar and scribbled an “M” on his hand. “I have to get a mirror,” he said. On the far side of the dining room, there is a large oyster bar in the corner. Along with oysters on the half shell, that area will turn out salads, boiled shrimp and plates of raw fish. It also will be a space to gut and clean whole fish. Pêche has a wholesale license, which allows it to buy directly from fishers. “That’s going to give us access to fish that you don’t normally see. Things like mackerel,” Link said. “A lot of fishermen throw that away, but, if you have a relationship with them, they’ll keep it for us.” And behind the pass, surrounded by pale green tile, is Pêche’s pride and joy: a massive steel grill custom-built by Link’s cousin Dwayne Link. “We haven’t gotten to play with this yet,” Link said, “so we’re not even sure if it works. We’re pretty sure it will.” There are commercially made grills for restaurants, but they weren’t big enough for what Link and company had in mind. Pêche’s grill is modeled on ones they saw in Uruguay and Spain. Link figures that other restaurants soon will be copying Pêche’s primitive kitchen. “I’m good at spotting these food trends,” he said. “We went from molecular gastronomy to cooking over fire.” The grill will let them cook seafood in a way not common in Louisiana. The opening menu includes grilled mussels, catfish with pickled greens, and grilled tuna with olive salad. In the future, they’d like to do a whole, salt-baked fish. “All the seafood places in the state are the same,” Link said. “There’s good stuff out there, but I’ve had it. I know where to get it, and it will always be there. We wanted to do it differently.” Pêche Seafood Grill officially opens Monday, April 22. The restaurant is located at 800 Magazine St.

Wall Street Journal

It’s very late on an early-spring evening, and I’m sitting at the French farmhouse table in my mother’s house in Seaside, Fla., looking at the remnants of several astonishingly good seafood dishes and more empty wine bottles than people. It’s the sort of scene I’ve surveyed many times at Donald Link’s New Orleans restaurant Herbsaint, in the company of the same festive group: Donald himself, the engine behind a Crescent City culinary empire that also includes Cochon and Butcher; his top manager, Heather Lolley; Cochon chef-partner Stephen Stryjewski; and Ryan Prewitt, chef-partner at the soon-to-open Pêche Seafood Grill, the restaurant that’s a long-held dream of all four.

This particular meal, though, is about more than late-night camaraderie. It’s the culmination of a research road trip along Florida’s Gulf Coast to collect ingredients and inspiration for Pêche. The restaurant was originally conceived, not long after Katrina, as a homage to the rustic seafood joints that once lined the banks of New Orleans’s Lake Pontchartrain. Now, after seven years and similar missions to South America and Spain, the glorified-seafood-shack concept has morphed into a worldly, gutsy and thoroughly modern restaurant. Two key inspirations are what Donald describes as “the primitive, soulful way of cooking” over fire in Uruguay, and the grilling wizard Victor Arguinzoniz, of Asador Etxebarri, in the Basque Country. Still, the team has never lost sight of the fabulous fresh ingredients closer to home, on the stretch of beach known as the Redneck Riviera.

Our first stop is Burris Farm Market, in Loxley, Ala., where we stock up on the muscadine wine vinegar that Donald loves, along with loaves of fresh-baked yeast bread. Lunch at the Original Point (motto: “Not Fancy But Famous”), a landmark near Perdido Key, Fla., includes such old-style Gulf Coast classics as smoked tuna dip and fried mullet backbones (yes, you eat the bones, chased immediately by lots of cold beer), as well as Royal Reds, a ruby-colored deep water shrimp virtually undiscovered until the early 1990s and so sweet and salty that folks make the three-hour drive from New Orleans just to eat them.

A half-hour away in Pensacola, the enormous market Joe Patti’s specializes in all things seafood. A crew of fresh-faced female 20-somethings in matching baseball caps takes orders (“Have I asked you yet if you’re having a good day?”), while 80-something Frank Patti (son of Joe), is the barker in their midst, hawking specials with a hand-held mike one minute and taking a cleaver to a tuna filet the next. After the team stocks up on Florida clams, more Royal Reds, Spanish mackerel, red snapper and scamp, a superior member of the grouper family, we head down Highway 98 toward Seaside, 75 miles away.

The road to Pêche, slated to open on April 20, was a lot less direct. As early as 2006, Donald went so far as to nail down a location and mock up a menu, but parking was a problem, and everybody was already busy opening restaurants, writing books and collecting awards (a James Beard for Donald, another for Stephen and a third for Donald’s book “Real Cajun”). Still, they kept coming back around to seafood. So when a spot opened up in the perfect building, a one-time livery undergoing a meticulous restoration on a Warehouse District corner, they jumped. Not only did the space have great character and some weird history—Jefferson Davis was embalmed upstairs—there was room for a free-standing oyster and crudo bar as well as a wood-burning oven, modeled after the rigs used in Uruguay and built by Donald’s uncle Duane Link.

In the kitchen at the Seaside house, the cooks get to work while Heather and I uncork bottles of Txakolina, a dry, citrusy and slightly fizzy Basque wine she and the boys discovered on a pilgrimage to Etxebarri. At Pêche, one side of the oven will have a raging wood fire throwing off coals that will be raked to the other side beneath a low grill. On our deck, we have a cheap gas contraption instead, but Ryan manages to pull off a perfectly cooked mackerel accompanied by delicious grilled chard, and Royal Reds dressed with garlic, oil and lemon. Inside, Stephen and Donald work on a chili-glazed scamp and a clam stew that is the essence of what Donald says they hope to achieve at Pêche: “seafood in a ballsy way.” Enriched with the leftover fish heads, bones and throats, it’s a way for the team to cook seafood without relying on typical go-tos like pork stock or bacon to provide nuance and depth.

My favorite dish of the night is the raw seafood salad, enlivened by citrus and a dash of the farmers market muscadine vinegar, and served with grilled slices of the yeast bread that are deemed a great success. But then Ryan comes in with another accompaniment, snapper skin grilled to a perfect crisp and dusted with sea salt—an ingenious receptacle for the fish and the kind of productive playing around that all three chefs thrive on.

Lunch the next day features the time-honored combo of Budweiser and Apalachicola oysters on the half shell, and sparks a conversation between Stephen and Ryan about the possibility of making their own saltines. Even the perfectionist Donald rolls his eyes at that. Pêche is poised to be a world-class restaurant, but it’s still, in part at least, an oyster bar. In New Orleans. “Guys,” he says, “the crackers have to come in the cellophane packets.”

NOLA DEFENDER

While seafood selections can be found on his masterful menus, a strictly seafood establishment has always been a dream of Louisiana born and bred Chef Donald Link. His dream is now coming to fruition, on the corner of Magazine and Julia in a 19th century historic building, former home of the American Coffee Company, in Peche. Under the direction of Best Chef- South James Beard award winner Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt have created culinary houses of Herbsaint, Cochon, and Calcasieu. The old world is a main theme of this new brainchild as the partners combine natural wood-fire cooking techniques and local seafood selections with a more contemporary approach. As members of the The Fat Back Collective, this group of fine dining aficionados has traveled the world exploring the practices of outdoor cooking in all corners of the globe. “It was all inspired by our trips to Uraguay and Spain and fell in love with their natural style of wood fire cooking. It’s an old-world style of outside cooking. We wanted to bring the outdoors, indoors. It’s a whole new ballgame at Peche, nothing like this has ever been done before,” said Chef Donald Link The menu is of original conception, taking wood-fire cooking with classic ingredients and the application of new techniques. The cornerstone of Peche is a custom built wood-fire stove and grill, which will be open to the dining room for patrons to marvel at the preparation. The live fire bi-level grill burns the logs down to wood coals for a South American and Spanish inspired smokiness. In addition, one element that Chef Link is especially excited for is the marble topped oyster bar; an addition he said he’s always wanted. Along with oysters to shuck, there will also be raw fish plates served. Fresh Louisiana fish will be seared, grilled and smoked on these one-of-a-kind dishes. The selections cover a vast range of flavors of Asian, European, South American and Spanish, all heightened with Louisiana flare. There is the Szechuan-inspired Ground Spicy Shrimp and Noodles, the French derived Crawfish Spring Onion Gratinee, over to the Southen favorite Stuffed Crab served with Pepper Jelly, even and all-American Fish Stick dish. In addition, the non-fish items share that diversity; from a Southern-themed Grilled Chicken with White BBQ Sauce to Thin Short Ribs with Garliky Chimichurri to a Grilled Lamb Sirlion with Salsa Verde. “This menu was a difficult one for us, we had some much we wanted to do and trying to whittle it down was tough. Even I can’t pick my favorite dish,” said Chef Link. The menu encourages a shared table experience with small plates so that everyone can get a taste of multiple items. Link describes their vision of satisfying every type of customer; “We wanted it to be for universal enjoyment, if you just wanted to come in for a couple bites at the bar or just really blow it all out style.” The food isn’t the only part of the worthwhile dining experience; the interior décor is designed to capture that old-world New Orleans character, keeping with the style of the centuries old building it resides, but with a more contemporary warehouse-y type feel. They’ve used antique wood in the posts and ceilings and even the chairs are all New Orleans, hand crafted from New Orleans Rum barrels by a local carpenter. The space is made bright and open with high ceilings and large, towering windows. Chef Link describes it as ‘Rustic yet Contemporary’ “We wanted to ride the line of being rustic without being kitschy and contemporary without being too modern. Truly a natural New Orleans style,” he says. Peche’s wide open space with spectacular views of the wood-fire grill and warehouse district is certainly the place where parties or individuals can nibble or feast, or just sip on their signature rum punch drink in a setting of sheer enjoyment inside the freshness of Peche.

Peche is the realization of a visionary vision: a true Louisiana seafood restaurant that owes little to any particular style of restaurant that has come before. Its recipes follow such convincing logic the dishes taste as if the kichen has unearthed forgotten history.

ABOUT US

Inspired by the cooking of South America, Spain, and the Gulf Coast, Chefs Donald Link, Stephen Stryjewski and Ryan Prewitt designed Pêche Seafood Grill. Focused on working with local fishermen and farmers who harvest sustainably, Pêche serves simply prepared contemporary dishes, rustic creations cooked on an open hearth, as well as fresh oysters and Gulf fish.

In 2014, Chef Ryan Prewitt was honored with a James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: South. That same year Pêche won a James Beard award for Best New Restaurant in America. Pêche was also named one of the Top 10 Best Restaurants in New Orleans both in 2015 and 2016 by Brett Anderson, Times Picayune.

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“We strive to create a unique New Orleans seafood restaurant using the traditions of live-fire cooking techniques experienced here in the South and abroad.”
- Donald Link

RESERVATIONS

We hold space at our bar and oyster bar for walk-ins and can also accommodate larger parties. Please contact us at 504.522.1744 or info@peche.com with any questions or concerns.